When told “Your blood pressure is a bit high” at a health checkup, the first things a doctor advises are “reduce salt intake” and “moderate aerobic exercise.” However, enduring the pain of leaving the soup of ramen and squeezing out time for jogging in a busy schedule is a monumental task, and many people give up after a few weeks, eventually choosing the path of relying on antihypertensive drugs.
However, there is a “third blood pressure control technique” that is the easiest to implement in daily life and has no side effects. That is the “habituation of chewing” to physically adjust the balance of the autonomic nervous system. In this article, we propose a practical 4-week self-care program to reduce hypertension risk through the jaw muscles, without relying on willpower.
The Mechanism by Which Chewing Lowers (or Doesn’t Raise) Blood Pressure
Why does “chewing” have a positive effect on blood pressure? Because it can calm the “hypertonia of the sympathetic nervous system (stress state),” which is a major factor in hypertension, through physical rhythmic movements.
- The Terror of Fast Eating (Transient Blood Pressure Rise): The act of binge eating in 5 minutes without chewing puts a sudden burden on the gastrointestinal tract and instantly concentrates systemic blood flow to the abdomen. To cope with this, the sympathetic nerve becomes suddenly excited, causing a severe blood pressure spike (rise) after meals (fast eating risk in E05).
- Relaxation via Serotonin (Nerve Stabilization): Conversely, if you continue to move your jaw slowly and at a constant rhythm with each bite, “serotonin (the hormone of peace of mind)” is secreted from the brainstem (related to E03, E07). Serotonin has the function of putting the brakes on excessively peaked sympathetic nerves and loosening the abnormal contraction of blood vessels (making the parasympathetic nerve dominant).
- In other words, taking the time to chew is equivalent to prescribing yourself a “natural, mild antihypertensive (relax valve)” in your brain with every meal.
4-Week Chewing Self-Care Implementation Plan
Before you build up stress by enduring a low-salt diet, first hack (redesign) your “eating environment” with the following steps.
Week 1: Rewriting Initial Settings (Physical Lock on Speed)
Do not count the number of times during the first week. You will forcibly make the culprit of rising blood pressure, “fast eating,” impossible by setting up physical inhibitory factors.
- Minimize Cutlery: Change the chopsticks you always use to “short chopsticks for children” and spoons to “teaspoons.” Physically reduce the amount you can bring to your mouth at once, inevitably stretching the total time required for the meal by 1.5 times.
- Prohibition of “Eating While Doing Something Else”: Eating while watching TV or looking at a smartphone drastically reduces the number of chews unconsciously. Put the screen face down during meals and concentrate solely on the sensation (texture) in your mouth, focusing on “what am I chewing right now.”
Week 2: Preemptive Placement of Defense Ingredients (Hardness)
In the second week, change just one aspect of the meal’s content (texture).
- Mandatory Starter: For the “very first bite” of every meal, absolutely place an ingredient with a chewy texture (large root vegetables, hard nuts, dried squid, etc.) that cannot be swallowed in a few bites. This “ritual of exhausting the jaw with the first bite” becomes an anchor that slows down the pace of the entire subsequent meal and prevents a rapid rise in postprandial blood pressure.
Week 3: Post-Meal “Gum Cross-Training”
After finishing a meal, many people either lie down immediately or immediately return to their next task and begin to feel strong stress. This is what keeps blood pressure high.
- 15-Minute Chewing Time: Immediately after eating (before returning to work or lying down on the sofa), put sugarless hard gum in your mouth and continue to chew at a “constant rhythm” for 15 minutes. This post-meal rhythmic movement sustains serotonin secretion and becomes a powerful autonomic nervous system cushion (buffer) before facing afternoon work (stress).
Week 4: Fixing into Complete Unconsciousness (Tuning)
By the fourth week, let go of the consciousness that you “must chew.”
- Over the past three weeks, your body (gastrointestinal tract and autonomic nervous system) has completely become accustomed to a slow, steady-paced meal. Conversely, a highly accurate sensor system should be complete where if you do the “5-minute binge eating” like you used to, you will feel severe stomach upset and palpitations (the discomfort of rising blood pressure).
For the purpose of “lowering blood pressure,” lifestyle improvements accompanied by endurance and pain will not last long. Hack the most familiar, zero-cost act of “chewing meals you do every day” and take back the controller of your autonomic nervous system. This is the first step in the ultimate self-care that does not depend on medication.
Chew Better, Live Better.
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